SIA Releases Revisions to Control Panel Standard for Public Comment

The Security Industry Association (SIA) has released a draft set of revised standards for security system control panels and their associated arming and disarming devices that are intended to reduce the incidence of false alarms.

The “Control Panel Standard—Features for False Alarm Reduction” is meant for use by manufacturers in the design of control panels and alarm signal receivers. It also can serve as a reference for security system installers, specifiers and users; central stations; manufacturers of central station products, such as receivers and automation software; and others.

The new standard would make several significant changes, including eliminating single- button devices to initiate panic alarms, providing exceptions for the specified time ranges of the entry and dialer delay times, expanding the range for swinger shutdown programming and requiring more specific product documentation.

The revisions are considered to be substantive, in standards parlance. This means products listed to the current standard may need to be resubmitted to a testing laboratory to demonstrate compliance with the new guidelines. Such a review, presumably, would focus on the new features of the standard.

The draft version of the standard can be downloaded from the SIA Standards Control Panel Working Group Web page. SIA is an ANSI-certified standards-developing organization. Participation in its standards-development process is open to the public. Anyone interested in participating can find information and meeting schedules on the SIA Web site at www.siaonline.org.